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What Do You Do When You Think No One Is Watching?

Seth Godin is my marketing hero.  He says what we wish we had said.  When I read a blog post of his from last month (OK, so I don't read all my RSS feeds every day) I was blown over by what he said. It's definitely worth a read.

Now that you've gone to read it, I'll tell you that for some reason it had never occurred to me that if I knew who they were, they knew who I was.  Ninety nine percent of the time that was good but my confession, and I suspect yours as well, is that there were times when those who knew who I was may not have been inspired.

I'm just glad that's behind me.  Now that I have my own business it's all very different.  This isn't somewhere I can afford to be anything but totally transparent.  I must have integrity at all times. It's fortunate for me that I want to have that when it's my business.  Why was it a bit more difficult when it was someone else's?

What do you think?

How My Mind Works

I was marveling at how my thoughts (and actions) take me from one place to somewhere completely different but absolutely perfect for me at the very time I "should" be there.  It always amazes me how these things manage to happen.  Did you ever see a television show called Connections?  It started with one thing and led us, item by item, person by person, from something totally unlikely to a discovery, an invention, something that changed the way we view the world.  I wish I could come up with a good example but what has stuck in my mind was the process and how similar it was to how my mind seems to work.

That made me wonder if that isn't the way the world just naturally works and we spend much of our time trying to make things linear when they are frequently totally non-linear.

The last hour is a perfect example of the whole process.  This didn't start an hour ago.  It started, well, actually, it started several years ago when I was introduced to "formal" bartering by friends of mine in Spokane, Washington.  This was, I would guess, at least five--possibly as much as seven years ago.  I got three people to sign up and the company very nicely gave me $300 in trade to use as I wished.  How nice of them is that? 

That really has almost nothing to do with this story except that I hadn't used those $300 and then I moved to the Seattle area and didn't really think about it any more.  Yesterday I got a phone call from Patrick at Tradia telling me they were looking for a new employee to take care of the folks in the Spokane area and he wanted to let me know that there would be no sign-up fee for the time being and for everyone I signed up I would get $150 in spendable barter funds.  Well, what a deal but I'm now about 350 miles from Spokane.  Not to worry, there are things I can use all over the United States--in fact, all over the world. 

I'll shorten this whole process up or I could be here for hours just writing away about this.  So, the talk with Patrick makes me think that I still have that $300 hanging around and it's about time I used that so I could make room for more money in my account (it's a mental game I play with myself, not anything literal) so I went looking for a bed and breakfast (might as well splurge since it's just sitting there waiting to be spent).  No B&B in my area that appealed to me.  Next I thought to look for a seamstress/tailor to make a pair of slacks I've been wanting and perhaps even a pattern to go with them so I could replicate them later. 

As I was scrolling down the categories, "Coaching--Career" and "Coaching--Life" caught my eye.  I had the world's best coach (you've heard all about Deanna Davis in earlier posts) but she had retired from coaching months ago and it was time for me to find another one.  I clicked on that category and discovered there were about 10 coaches willing to use barter funds to do coaching with them.  One appealed to me and I called and left a message with her.  She called me back today.  Her name is Wendy. 

That made me think about the derivation of Wendy.  I learned, not long ago, that Wendy had never been used as a name, in fact, had never been a word, until it was created for the play Peter Pan and Wendy.  Of course I had to mention that to Wendy.  I knew she must have heard this before but I still find it a fun thing to know and talk about and who better?  Yes, she was aware of where it had come from but she didn't know when it had come into existence. 

We both went to the Internet and I came up with the Peter Pan and Wendy site where it not only said that the first time the play had been performed was in 1904, but that there was a commemorative centenary book.  That, of course, led me to Amazon.com where I found the book and discovered it was reasonably priced.   I'm a fan of interesting books like this, especially ones so richly illustrated, so this will soon be on my bookshelf.

What started with barter funds, went to coaching, and ended up purchasing a book about Peter Pan and Wendy. 

What does this have to do with anything?  Perhaps absolutely nothing, but it caused me to think that perhaps, rather than thinking of these little journeys as purely accidental, perhaps they are ways God/the Universe/Spirit (you choose your name) leads each of us to where we want to go--more than that--where we are meant to go.  Rather than thinking of it as a bizarre behavior and one I should try to eradicate from my life so I can think more logically and get more done, perhaps I might want to consider that getting from one point to another in totally logical and linear ways might keep me from experiencing the luscious, juicy parts of life.

So, take this, leave it, whatever is your desire, but at least think about how things may be far less accidental than we sometimes view them.  Perhaps I am exactly where I am supposed to be right this very minute in order to get the very thing I need most in my life right now.  And perhaps that isn't the case but since it hurts no one to think the more positive and uplifting thought, I choose to believe that is the case--for me--for today.

Until next time...

Law of Attraction, Part 2

Have you been hearing the buzz about the Law of Attraction?  If you haven't, chances are you've been living in a cave.  It's the hottest topic in the non-traditional business communities and it's rapidly finding its way into the most traditional boardrooms in the country.

On the off chance you haven't heard about this, there's one very painless way to learn about it.  It's a movie called The Secret.  You don't even have to buy the DVD to watch it.  If you have a relatively fast Internet connection, you can "rent" it for $4.95 and watch it online.  If you decide you want to purchase the DVD after that you can even deduct the cost of the rental from the purchase price.  You can read more about this very well-made movie here.  That movie will lead you to a ton of other teachers.  I'll probably be talking more about this as well and I'm sure I'll tuck my favorite resources in here as well.

If you don't even want to do that much to learn what this law is all about, here's the really short version (my short version).  What you focus on, good or bad, is attracted to you.   I could go on for hours but I really want to get to the reason I wanted to write this particular post.

I've known about the Law of Attraction for ages.  I even thought I was paying attention to its principles for the most part.  I could never figure out why my life wasn't a smashing success with all the focus I put on getting ahead.  Again, another story for another time.   In fact, I posted about this very thing here.

About a year ago I made an active decision to stop playing around with my Virtual Assistance business and go all out to make it a full-time career.  I started by getting a personal and business coach.  I've written about Deanna Davis before.  I was very fortunate.  She is no longer coaching because the other business ventures she's involved in have taken off so quickly she doesn't have time to coach any more.

The a dear friend of mine sent me a book about the Law of Attraction called Ask and It Is Given.  I read that and figured out why I wasn't successful yet.  I then started putting into practice what I learned there.

Just to give me a little extra time to build my business, the Universe kindly got me fired.  That was pretty scary but it was absolutely perfect, of course.

I was still kind of clunking along on the whole Law of Attraction thing.  It was working rather nicely for me but not quite as much as I had hoped for.  I was making exactly enough to pay my bills each month.  Hey, that's not awful considering it takes most people well over a year to build a suffiently large enough practice to support themselves but I had really been hoping for something more akin to "doing very well" than to "doing just fine."

I continued to read and watch DVDs and go to events and then, a little over a month ago, something clicked and I got it.  I wish I could tell you exactly what it was or how I did it but it seems to have been a lot of little things.  Here's how I know it actually worked for me.

I was sitting in my office one day nearly two months ago when the phone rang.  It was a marketing consultant in Los Angeles who had found my phone number while searching for more information on Deanna Davis--that coach I was telling you about earlier.  She wrote a book I reviewed very favorably in a post right here.  The post led him to my web site and that led him to me.

What he said that was so amazingly Law of Attraction was something like this.  "I know I hate doing the administrative tasks of running a business but I truly want to have my own business.  I'm not big enough to hire someone full-time but I need help.  When I saw your website I knew you could help me."  He became my client immediately and we've been working together ever since.  In fact, last month I earned three times what I did the month before and his business was responsible for half of that increase.

That, alone, would have been enough to erase any shred of doubt I might still have about the whole Law of Attraction thing but that's not the end of it.  This same client said he thought he might need another senior VA-type person because his business was growing so quickly he needed more help.  He knew I had other clients and didn't want to ask more than I could give.

On top of that, I received a response to an email I sent four months ago.  I was writing to her to comment on one of those "small world" things that had happened and included her, a woman I have never met.  Her response included a comment that she wanted to talk with me about working together!  Oh my goodness!  I'm getting more business than I can handle.

What does that mean?  That means I get to find people to help me do the work!  I get to provide income to other people!   Now that's Law of Attraction!

I'll keep you posted on how this goes and more resources in case you're interested.

Until next time...

Growing up Dangeriously

My work has been so busy lately I haven’t had time to blog.  It’s good for my bank account but I’ve missed posting so I’ve decided to post whenever I think of something I want to tell my friends, whether I’ve done any research or not.  I think I’d rather stay in touch than feel I have to only write when I have something “important” to say.  Here’s my first offering.

I got one of those email forwarded things yesterday.  Some days I like getting them and other days I really hate it.  Yesterday I was in a mood to take a look at it and I’m so glad I did.  Below is part of the one I received yesterday just because I wanted to share it with you. 

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, and 60's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.  They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.  Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.  As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.  Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.  We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.  No one was able to reach us all day.  And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable (for many of us there was no TV), no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers!, no Internet or chat rooms.  WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.  We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.  We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

=============

Doesn’t this bring back memories?  Actually, the one I received included the ‘70s but my daughter was raised then and by that time, at least where I was living, most of those things just didn’t happen that much any more.  I was a smoker when I got pregnant and my doctors were pretty darned adamant that I quit immediately.  Well, to be honest, after I had her I started up again and I did smoke not only in the house but in the car.  Who knew?

The things that caught my attention the most were more about my very young life.  I definitely related to the part about going outside for the whole day.  I can remember not only going outside but walking down to 9 Mile Creek and spend hours in the woods—alone—and no one thought a thing about it.  Every once in a while my mother would yell at me for being gone too long but that was when she told me to be home for lunch and I lost track of time and didn’t come home until mid-afternoon.  She didn’t yell because she was worried—she yelled because I hadn’t followed the rules.

We didn’t get our first television set until I was four years old.  We got one channel.  When we moved into the “big city” we got three channels.  Eventually we got five channels—the major three, PBS, and one independent channel.  That’s what we had until I was 23 when we got cable.  At that time cable just meant we got the regular channels with clear reception rather than trying to use rabbit ears or an antenna on the roof.  It also included HBO which showed the same five or six movies over and over and over all month long.  Each month there was a new movie.  Yep, that was cable.  Are you old enough to remember that?  My granddaughter was simply amazed when we talked about it.  Oh, and there was no remote.  You went over to the television set and turned the knob on the cable box.  Of course we didn’t mind.  That’s always how we had changed the channel on our television set.

I was just sharing with a friend about how we would pick vegetable out of the garden and ate them right there, without washing them.  What made it funny was that the garden had been fertilized with manure.  We would absolutely cringe at that today. 

Here’s my favorite:  When I was two years old I spent a year living with my grandparents so my mother could work while my father attended baking school.  Grandma and Grandpa lived in an apartment above a furniture store.  They had a “balcony” that was actually the flat roof at the back of the apartment.  Each side of what we referred to as the porch had a brick planter.  The front side, however was open to the loading dock below.  When I got there Grandpa went out and painted a white line about three feet from the edge and told me I was never to cross that line without either he or Grandma holding my hand.  If I wanted to go to the edge I was to go in the house and get them to come back with me.  Then they left me out there to play.  Yes they did.  I never crossed the line and I always went in to get one of them when there was a furniture delivery.  I loved to lie on my tummy and look over the edge so I could watch the beautiful furniture being unloaded off the truck. 

Can you imagine what we would do if we saw a two-year-old playing on a rooftop “porch” with no supervision—well, even WITH supervision?  Oh my, CPS would be there in seconds!  Neglect, endangerment, abuse—it would not be pretty.

So, enjoy the memories. 

Until next time…

A Joyful Attitude

A couple of weeks ago, while watching the Olympics, I happened to see the snowboarding slalom.  I’m not usually a snowboarding fan but the Olympics are just different somehow. 

At any rate, two of the US team were wearing slightly irregular gear.  One was wearing a tiara and the other had on a double strand of pearls.  The announcers (both men) were commenting on this and they really didn’t think it was appropriate for the Olympics.

I chuckled when I saw it and just went on to watch the event.  This has stuck with me, though, and I finally figured out why. 

I think the reason those women were wearing what appeared to be frivolous accessories had to do with the joyful spirit they felt at competition.  Yes, it was important to do their very best but not at the expense of their humor.  It looked like they were saying they were there to enjoy the experience while still doing their utmost to win.  They were at the Olympics—they were celebrating that fact.

This is how I approach my business and it works wonderfully well for me.  I have fun in the midst of very serious work.  My clients and I collaborate to get the very best product/service out there that we can manage but we do it in a spirit of joyful celebration.  Sure, there are things I do that aren’t exactly fun but the spirit remains the same.  I work with people I respect, admire, and just generally like.  This makes my efforts a joyful undertaking. 

Inject joy into your life!  You deserve it!

Until next time…

Law of Attraction

Here comes yet another different kind of post for me. This one deals with the Law of Attraction.

I’ve believed in the Law of Attraction for at least 10 years, now. “Believed” is the operative word here. I believed in it in a very cerebral, intellectual way but there was a little corner of my brain that said things like, “Well, sure, it works but not for me” and “If it works so well, why hasn’t it worked for me?” Right. Belief.
 
I wish I could remember where I heard this and the exact quote but I don’t. If you do, please let me know so I can accurately present and attribute it. Here it is. There are two ways we learn things: with great repetition or great impact. The speaker went on to say that when we were children and our mother said, “Don’t do that” 150 times, we learned not to do it. If, on the other hand, we went into a situation with a kid a few years older and did the same thing and the kid punched us in the nose, we didn’t do that ever again. We learned through great impact.
 
This is all to say that I chose to learn the Law of Attraction through great repetition. I’ve been reading about it for years. Now, suddenly, I pick up a book and it says that if I’m saying I intend to have a new car, the intention I’m actually putting out into the universe is that I have a crappy car. Whoa! I suddenly got it. Now, what I put out there is that my car is perfect. The car I currently own is perfect for me today. The car I own next year will be perfect, whether it’s the car I currently own or a different car. Whatever car I have is perfect.
 
I couldn’t resist telling you about this because I’ve had the most amazing things happening ever since I came to this realization. This happened to me two weeks ago.
 
I should preface this by saying that a wee bit less than a month ago I became unemployed, thus giving me the opportunity to build my business full time. Until then I was working my full time job, working with my fabulous clients, and building my business in my spare time (that included my blog posts, working on my web site, and marketing). When I came home after losing my job and told my friend what had happened (through copious tears) she said she understood that I might not feel this way right now but asked if I could possibly consider that I had been putting out to the Universe that I wanted to work my business full time and that the Universe had kindly obliged me by giving me the time to do that. Well, she was right. I didn’t want to think about it like that, but during the next two days those words kept running around in my head and suddenly I actually felt that way.
 
Back to the story. So, there I was, feeling grateful that I had time to build my business and reading a book all about the Law of Attraction, and it all clicked. Since then I have been contacted out of the blue by someone who was referred to me by someone else (we aren’t working together yet but I believe we will very shortly), gotten a client during the initial interview, and have two more interviews scheduled for next week.
 
My biggest challenge right now is reminding myself every chance I get that I deserve ideal clients, that everything coming to me is perfectly ordered, that this is how life is supposed to work. As I’m sure I’ve shared somewhere before in one of my posts, my dear friend, Karen Wright, says “The untrodden path grows weeds.” I must constantly and consistently keep my mind focused on the Law of Attraction until it becomes so much a part of me that I can’t even imagine what it would be like not to feel like that.
 
How exciting is that?
 
Until next time…

What the Bleep Were We Thinking?

I just finished watching What the Bleep Were We Thinking? and I'm still reeling.  In fact, I'm not even sure how to describe it.  It's part documentary, part movie, part Discovery Channel experience, and part...well, I don't know what else but something.

Primarily, it discusses quantum physics in a way we can all understand.  It explains how our thoughts create our reality.  Sure, I've been reading books explaining this phenomenon for years, not the 'quantum physics' part but the 'thoughts creating our reality' part, and I got it at some level but it didn't really connect at a gut level until I saw the Bleep movie. 

I have one question, though:  Why haven't I heard about this movie before now?  I can only believe it's because I've had my head somewhere besides paying attention to popular television talk shows because, according to the What the Bleep website (yep, there's not only a web site but a whole movement surrounding this movie), it's been a fairly hot topic of conversation on popular television talk shows since its release. 

After watching the movie and visiting the web site, I downloaded the study guide for group discussion.  It's not that I necessarily plan to join a group discussion any time soon but I think I want to read more about the whole subject. 

What I know for sure is I think this is a movie we should all see--at least once.  In fact, I think I'm going to go watch it one more time before I send it back to Netflix tomorrow.  Enjoy!

Until next time...